We had some wonderful people raising us, but they still weren't our parents. As you get older, it gets distorted and convoluted, complicated, and, of course, you start looking for attention, affection, affinity in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways.

There's inevitably something missing when you grow up in this kind of an environment when your parents travel a lot. When your father is famous, you are looked at and expected of. There are standards you need to meet.

I never got to make that transition from little girl to young woman... and that really screws you up.

I've had my share of doing things that I really wish I hadn't done.

It's important to wallow and grieve when you have a health issue. I don't think you really get the best stuff out of life until you've had the worst stuff.

I would hate to look back on my life and go, 'You know, I wanted to do a rock n' roll album. I should have, and I never did.'

I'm a born-again Christian. I was raised Episcopalian - I've always been of a Christian faith, but I became much more active in it when I married my first husband, Marvin. I changed from Episcopalian to Baptist.

By the time I approached my forties, I had the self-assurance to approach all the genres I love so deeply: R & B, rock, jazz, and pop.

Losing people is dark, but some things you just have to accept.

I think that I sound a lot better than Diana Ross.

I don't think that my parents even imagined that I would be exposed to drugs. In those days, for some reason, it was not talked about, just like sex was not talked about.

My idols are Janis Joplin and Annie Lennox, who are neither of them from the typical pop culture.

The house where I grew up in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles was like a dream - even though my family faced threats after my father bought it in August 1948.

I'm an ordinary person under extraordinary circumstances.

I've always loved Spanish. I love my father's Spanish records.

I'm just really, really thankful. I'm thankful to the doctors; I'm thankful to the family that donated the kidney.

My friend was on dialysis for six years before he got a new kidney. I was on dialysis for eight months. I'm almost not even the typical person who has kidney failure.

When I was old enough to walk home alone from school, I loved seeing our house from a distance. It sat on the corner of South Muirfield Road and West 4th Street and had this proud, majestic look. But I rarely went through the front door. The back was more dramatic.

When I did 'Unforgettable,' it wasn't appropriate for us to take liberties with that music. There had to be kind of a fine line between what had made it so great and the fact that a woman was singing it. We changed some of the arrangements, but not too much.

I was determined to create my own identity. My first hits, in fact, were straight-up rhythm and blues. My voice was compared to Aretha Franklin's - though, for my money, no one compares to Aretha.

It's remarkable what a new kidney does to your life. I have no complaints... I'm pretty amazed. I have been working on my stamina.

If you don't shop smart, you get a little trendy.

I already had high blood pressure. I have hypertension. And I think the chemo was just too much for my kidneys. And they went into failure. And that was September 12th of 2008. And the doctor rushed me right to the hospital.

The medication I had to take was a form of chemotherapy. You feel like death every day. No appetite. No energy. But the treatment worked. It cured my liver 80 per cent but compromised my kidneys.